first jump

Jump from C-130 at PLAB cancelled the previous day.

Reveille at 2am

Simple warm-up exercises at 3am

Pre-jump training at 3.30am

Load up parachutes and other stores at 4am

Breakfast at 5am

Up the bus at 6am

[From this point onwards, I lost my sense of time.]

Arrive at SBAB

Unload stores at RV point

Chinook-interior orientation

Back to RV point

Watch the first sortie fit up, enter the chinook. Chinook takes off, and flies circles in the air around the airbase. Streamers let out from chinook, floats straight downwards, to much cheers, considering the c-130 jump was cancelled due to ’strong winds’.

And the first pass of sortie 1 makes their exit.

*Fast forward*

I fit up my parachute and reserve. Noticed that my mains is serial number 108 [block number of old home], and my reserve is serial number 656 [block number of current home]. I must be feeling damn sian.

Routine fit-up checks by jumpmasters, and we sat down to wait for our turn to load up the chinook.

…which got delayed due to the chinook going back to refuel.

More time-wasting.

Finally, the walk down to the compass ring. Chinook hovers down and lands. Hear the mighty roar and feel the huge blasts of wind. As I walked towards the chinook, the turbo suddenly started up, generating lots of noise and heat, that we had to run all the way into the chinook to avoid them as much as possible.

“Fasten safety belt!” And we have lift-off.

Looked out the window to beautiful scenery.
The never-ending, fast-paced “patta-patta” sounds produced by the rotary wings is the best metaphor for my heartbeat.

“500ft, prepare for action!”

“First pass, unfasten safety belt!”
“Stand up!”
“Hook up!”
“Check static line!”
“Check equipment!” “Helmet, capewell, life jacket, chest strap, reserve snap, ripcord, leg straps, pack tie, static line, clear and hook-up!”
“Sound off for equipment check!” “7 okay!” “6 okay!” “5 okay!” “4 okay!” “3 okay!” “2 okay!” “1 okay, stick okay!”
“move forward!” “Right left right left.”
“5 seconds, stand at the door!” “Right! Left! Right! Left!”
“Green on… GO!”

The people of the second and third pass started cheering as we watched the first pass sink out of view as they jumped out the back ramp. Being in the third pass, I cheered along too.

The guy on my right looked really nervous.

Second pass out.

As the chinook made a turn, it was our turn.

“Stand at the door” “right left right left”
“Go!” “right left right left”
“Go!” “right left right left”
“Go!” “right left right left”
“Go!” “right left right left”
And I found myself standing at the edge of the ramp.

“Go!”

-to be continued-

grandma

Every time I visit my paternal grandmother at my uncle’s house, without fail, she would ask about how I’m doing at school, and then I’ll remind her that I’m in the army now, and she’ll comment, with genuine surprise, that I’m already in the army and tells me to be careful.

Problem is, in her memory, I’ll forever be the school-going grandson of hers who had just enlisted in the army. Though, I’m actually glad that I still exist in her memory.

It’s scary to imagine that one day, my parents, or even myself, just might suffer the same fate as her.

I don’t know what your attitude towards your grandparents are, but I love my grandparents to bits.

Till the next time, it’s me, woonie, signing off.

booking in

I have officially developed a phobia for booking in.

Fuck.

Till the next time, it’s me, woonie, signing off.

birthday

Why is it that, even after
1. removing the display of my birthday on my profile,
2. keeping my 11B out of sight for at least 3 weeks
3. keeping a low profile for a week
…my bunkmates still remember when my birthday is?

—————————————

Birthday celebs this year had been awesome. Though, having pizzas for 2 days in a row, lots of cake and other junk food over the weekend, plus not much PT in the week after that, had made me terribly unfit, so much so that when the super-xiong PT resumed on Thursday, I was almost breathless after 20mins of non-stop running and couldn’t keep up with my pre-pizza pace.

Nevertheless, I’d really like to thank everyone for
1. Pool @ Beauty World
2. Lunch @ Wishbone
3. CTR @ Aaron’s
4. Pizza @ Pizzarella
5. the Oreo Cheesecake
6. the stayover
7. everything else.

(:

—————————————-

Have I mentioned that constructing a ghillie suit is horribly tedious?

And why why why have I not received any offers from NUS? ):

Till the next time, it’s me, woonie, signing off.

so near yet so far

Sit-ups: capped at 40
Shuttle Run: 10.1s
Pull-ups: 10
SBJ: 234cm
2.4km: 10:49mins

AABBB 22 points
Pass. 1 point away from silver.

Frustrating.

———————————

From one of the creators of The Students’ Sketchpad: ebget

Till the next time, it’s me, woonie, signing off.

improvements

Everytime I take an official IPPT, I see improvements…

Sit-ups: capped at 40
SBJ: 226cm
Shuttle Run: 9.8s
Pull-ups: 10
2.4km: 10:41mins

AABBC
Pass.

…but it’s never enough. The instructors even accused me of intentionally trying to OOC [before this test].

Till the next time, it’s me, woonie, signing off.

scholarship

Civil Service scholarship rejected, and they didn’t even bother forwarding my app to ‘the relevant ministries’. Time will tell if this is in fact a blessing in disguise. But for now, I shall be utterly depressed about it.

IPPT and 24-hour Guard Duty tomorrow. Will be missing RJ Photog’s outing to the Old Changi Hospital. ):

And I want to watch Detroit Metal City!

(Must remember to continually update my hardcopy NS journal.)

Till the next time, it’s me, woonie, signing off.

IPPT, again.

Shuttle run: 9.8s
Sit-ups: capped at 40
SBJ: 219cm
Pull-ups: still at 6
2.4km: 10:58mins new PB

AABDD
Fail.

Till the next time, it’s me, woonie, signing off.

Our insignificant existence

Went on a Melancholy of Haruhi anime marathon last weekend, and I came across this little recollection by Haruhi, which I can’t help but find it similar to what I had thought about many times when I was younger:

Say. Have you ever realized how insignificant your existence is on this planet?

I have. It’s something that I’ll never forget.

During elementary school, when I was in sixth grade, the whole family went to watch a baseball game at the stadium. I wasn’t particularly interested in baseball, but I was shocked once we got there.

There were people everywhere I looked.

The ones on the other side of the stadium looked like squirming grains of rice all packed together. I wondered if every last person in Japan had gathered in this place.

And so, I asked my dad, exactly how many people were in the stadium? His answer was that a sold-out game meant around fifty-thousand people.

After the game, the path to the station was flooded with people. The sight stunned me. So many people around me, yet they only made a fraction of the people in Japan.

Once I got home, I got a calculator and did the math. We learned that the Japanese population was a hundred million and some in social studies. Divide fifty thousand into that, and you only get two-thousandth.

I was stunned again.

Not only was I just one little person in that sea of people in that stadium, but that sea of people was merely a drop in the ocean.

I had thought myself to be a special person up until that point.

I enjoyed being with my family, and most of all, I thought that my class in my school had the most interesting people in the world.

But, that was when I realized it wasn’t like that. The things that happened in what I believed to be the most enjoyable class in the world could be found happening in any school in Japan. Everyone in Japan would find them to be ordinary occurances.

Once I realized this, I suddenly found that my surroundings were beginning to lose their colour.

Brush my teeth and go to sleep at night.
Wake up and eat breakfast in the morning.

People do those everywhere.

When I realized that everyone did all these things on a daily basis, everything started to feel so boring. And if there were so many people in the world, there had to be someone living an interesting life that wasn’t ordinary.

I was sure of it.

Why wasn’t that person me?

That’s all I could think about until I graduated from elementary school. And in the process, I realized something: Nothing fun will happen if you sit around waiting. So I figured I would change myself in middle school. Let the world know that I wasn’t a girl content with sitting around and waiting. And I conducted myself accordingly.

But in the end, nothing ever happened.

Before I knew it, I was in high school. I thought something would have changed.

…

Till the next time, it’s me, woonie, signing off.

Pause fillers

By a moment of chance, I found myself attending a Toastmasters’ meeting at my neighbourhood CC.

It all started on Thursday when I saved the Documents_Checklist.pdf file onto my brother’s memory card so I could go down to the photocopy shop to print it. Then I did not put it back into the camera.

And as I was coming home on Friday, my brother was all, “Damn you.”, because he needed to use the camera.

So I went down to the CC to pass him the memory card, and found him in the conference room. Turns out that the toastmasters’ club meeting was about to start in 15mins. So what happened was that, my brother had to leave halfway to ‘go on a hot date’, so I took over his role as the AH counter, even though I’ve no idea what was going on.

It was actually quite a pleasant experience. The Zhenghua Toastmasters’ Club is a fairly new club, at an age of barely over a year old, and the people there are friendly and accommodating, not only to the new and unconfident speakers, but also to the guests.

As the AH counter, I was supposed to note down on a piece of paper every single instance of any person in the room saying ‘Ah’, ‘Uh’, “Mm”, making any repeated words, or any other pause fillers. As the president of this club has mentioned, pause fillers are used by people to get their audience sense their existence, but are frowned upon by the club.

I have a habit, however, of making it a point to include pause fillers in my speaking. [I even use it in SMS ._.] So it was quite a challenge for me not to use them during the session.

I also attempted the table topics section of the meeting. I was supposed to give an impromptu 2min speech on the topic that I’ve randomly picked from a bunch of topics [think Scenes from a Hat]. I’ve always liked impromptu speeches, so I was more than eager to try it out. I think I failed miserably, but at least the people there were, at the very least, entertained.

All in all, I thought it was a fun experience joining that toastmasters’ club meeting. Would love to officially join the club, but unfortunately, they only meet once a month, on weekdays. So maybe I shall join the club next time.

—————————————-

Walked 7 clicks from Aaron’s house to Thomson Plaza in 90mins flat. whee.

Till the next time, it’s me, woonie, signing off.